


Drive

by lifeonmars



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Awkward First Times, Being Lost, Frank Yet Fumbling Discussion of Sex, M/M, Minor Injuries, Stranded, Virgin Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-19 07:34:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeonmars/pseuds/lifeonmars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Into the car,” Sherlock orders, fumbling in his coat pockets for keys. “Take off your clothes.”</p><p>John blinks stupidly. “What?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drive

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my betas, who make sure I'm never stranded without petrol: [Ben](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingsignpost), [Esterbrook](http://archiveofourown.org/users/esterbrook), and [Ishmael](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishmael/).
> 
> Months ago in chat, [Persian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthe/pseuds/Persian%20Slipper) requested Virgin!Sherlock. Here he is, Persian. Sorry he took so long to get here... he got a bit lost.

John Watson may not have a mind palace, but he keeps mental lists just the same. Bullet points tend to occur to him while chasing criminals on the coattails of Sherlock Holmes. Simple things like _Don’t forget your gun._ Sometimes, more specific words of wisdom: _Chow mein on a linoleum floor can effectively slip up an assailant._

Today’s item: _Don't believe Sherlock when he tells you the car has plenty of petrol._

Perhaps this merits an addendum. _Don’t let Sherlock drive, ever again._

“You didn’t want to stop at the service station near the inn,” John growls, getting out and slamming the passenger door far harder than necessary. “Oh, no, it was just going to be a little jaunt into the woods. Just going to scope out the territory, you said. _Three hours,_ Sherlock. Three _fucking_ hours off-roading into God’s own glorious wilderness. I don’t know, where are we? The arse end of Scotland?”

Sherlock ignores him. He opens the driver's side door and reaches down to pop the fuel cap, then walks around the side of the Range Rover to unscrew it and peer inside. What he hopes to accomplish with this gesture, John’s not entirely sure. Even the world’s greatest genius can’t conjure up a litre of fuel from thin air.

“We’re out of petrol,” Sherlock says flatly.

“Stunning,” John says, crossing his arms. “That is scathingly brilliant, Sherlock. Best deduction you’ve made all year. What was your first clue, the fuel warning light? Or was it, I don’t know, _when the car stopped running?”_

Sherlock stabs at buttons on his phone. John didn't know it was possible for someone to express loud profanities through extreme silence, but apparently Sherlock knows how.

“Oh, don’t tell me,” John groans, looking around. The desolate, sweeping Scottish countryside dwarfs their car, stalled near a forest of huge evergreen trees amid endless rolling hills. It would be breathtaking if John’s one remaining nerve hadn’t just shredded itself to bits.

“No signal,” Sherlock confirms, looking up at him at last. “Try yours.”

John wrestles his phone from the pocket of his jacket and peers at the screen. Nothing even remotely resembling a bar.

“Nope,” he says. “Which is surprising, really, because I’m sure all the deer and badgers have been lobbying to get service out here for months.”

“Are you finished?” Sherlock pockets his phone and squints out at the infinite greenery.

“Not quite.”

“Fine.” Sherlock squats down in the damp grass and looks under the car, then straightens. “No obvious holes in the gas tank. You realise I’d calculated the petrol based on our projected mileage. We should have been able to drive back on an eighth of a tank.”

“I hate to be the one to break it to you, Sherlock, but I’m standing in a field that says your math didn’t work.”

Sherlock shoots him a dark look. “This terrain.” He gestures at the hills. “Mud. Fallen logs. Steep inclines. It significantly reduced our fuel efficiency.”

“I could have told you that would happen if you’d once mentioned where we were going. You said we were looking for possible locations to dump a body. I assumed we were taking actual _roads._ ”

“I brought an _off-road vehicle.”_

John points incredulously at the now-useless car. “People drive these things in London. How could I possibly know you were going to crash off into the trees with it? We’re not bloody Top Gear.”

“Enough,” Sherlock barks. “I made a mistake. I improperly weighted one variable. One.”

“Well, it was a bloody important one,” John snaps.

Sherlock turns away again.

“Fine.” John shoves his hands into his pockets. “Fine. Nothing we can do about it. We’re here now.” He squints at the distant horizon. The sun gleams between heavy clouds, low and molten. A wet breeze cuts across the back of his neck: it’s cold, and getting colder. “How do you propose we solve our little problem?”

“Now we know it’s likely that the murderer dumped the body between here and the road,” Sherlock says, gesturing in the direction of the distressingly distant roadway. “The last visible evidence of another off-road vehicle was over two miles north of here. It would be difficult to carry a body much further on foot, giving us a radius --”

“Not _that_ problem.” John takes a deep breath. It’s not nearly effective enough. “We’re stranded out here at dusk, God knows how far from the road, and that doesn’t register in your brain as a pressing concern?”

A disparaging look. “We’ll be able to walk most of the way back before it starts raining.”

John clears his throat. “Before it starts raining.”

“Yes.”

“I’m -- I’m just going to pretend you didn’t say that. Sherlock -- did you --” John’s fists clench of their own accord. “Did you drive us out into the wilderness knowing full well a storm was coming in?”

“Ideal conditions.”

“Okay.” More deep breaths. Still not helping. “I’m clearly missing something.”

Sherlock’s look is so familiar that he doesn’t need to voice the Obviously it implies. “We won’t be interrupted. The murderer’s not going to come out here tonight.”

“So basically,” John says slowly, “a murderer has more sense than we do.”

“You had ample opportunity to disagree with this plan when we left the inn this afternoon.”

“I can’t disagree with a plan when I have no information --”

“Use your brain,” Sherlock snaps. “Or have you become that accustomed to relying on mine? Out of practise, are you?”

John’s anger floods over any internal barriers that have not crashed down already. “Regardless of what you may think, Sherlock, living with you for the past year and a half has not given me _telepathy.”_

Sherlock looks as if he would flounce onto a couch, if he had one within reach. Since there are no convenient couches on the hillside, he makes do with turning on his heel to face the rolling fields, his coat whipping behind him in the semblance of one of his beloved dressing gowns.

“Right,” John says, clenching a fist reflexively. “I’m going for a walk.”

An entirely unsurprising weight of silence follows him as he puts his back to the car and starts off for a nearby cluster of trees.

* * *

The dense forest swallows John as he crunches angrily through leaves and picks his way around moss-covered boulders. The last rays of daylight filter into the canopy with a feeble glow, as if it’s almost not worth the effort to fight their way through the foliage.

Truth be told, it really isn’t worth the effort, but John needs space right now, and he’s not worried about finding the car again. The Army may have given him a few gifts he didn’t want -- PTSD and a bum shoulder, for starters -- but he did take home a few advantages, one being a rock-solid sense of direction. Even in failing light the terrain is easy enough to read, and he’d very much like to distance himself from the man who stranded him in the middle of Scotland without a second thought.

Well, that’s not quite accurate. Sherlock likely had a few second thoughts. He had second thoughts, fourth thoughts, probably eighty-seventh thoughts in that brain of his, all involving the afternoon’s drive, and didn’t bother to share any of them with John. Sherlock was probably hatching a plan on the train up to Scotland while John prodded him politely. “Any plans once we get there?” John had said, to which Sherlock gave his usual mysterious, noncommittal grunt. And in this case, John was meant to interpret that particular grunt as “Yes, we’re renting an off-road vehicle, neglecting to fill the tank, and driving it over fields and woods for three straight hours in search of a corpse which may or may not be hidden there.”

This is their pattern: John asks, John waits, John tries not to disturb the delicate machinery of a brilliant mind at work. And Sherlock doesn’t explain half of his reasoning until after the fact.

Larger boulders force their way between the trees, and the ground slopes off unevenly to the south. A bright cluster of greenery downhill reveals a stream, or at least some sort of runoff, slicing through the huge stones below. John recalls his half-filled water bottle in the car: a potential water source is worth investigating if they’re going to hike back to the road. If John can get a fire going in the damp grass -- which, he’s willing to wager, he can -- they can boil the water and refill their bottles before they walk back. That is, if he can convince Sherlock that refilling a water bottle before a hike is a good idea. Sherlock probably thinks they can fly back on the wings of eagles whilst making note of the six types of lichen they might find on the murderer’s shoes.

He makes for the patch of green, sliding a bit as he picks his way down the hill between the boulders, his brogues poorly suited for the task.

Sherlock’s silences are expected, yes, which is why John shouldn’t theoretically feel hurt when Sherlock fails to communicate the essentials. _I don’t speak for days on end_ , that’s nearly the first thing he’d said to John when they’d met, but -- somehow, now, it does hurt just a bit. A year and a half later, their lives are linked in strange symbiosis, a sort of closeness John’s never had with any other friend, and after all that time --

John’s left foot hits a patch of damp leaves and keeps sliding. He overcorrects for slippery footing, but the ground itself gives way beneath him. Before he can react, the hillside collapses under his feet, a gaping sinkhole opening between two boulders. He gropes for a handhold, but everything’s too slick. He stumbles sideways and down, left foot catching on the edge of one boulder just as his centre of gravity fails him. His foot is wrenched in a near-opposite direction. With a startled shriek of pain, John slides into the now-gaping hole, leaves tumbling alongside him.

The back of his head hits something soft, and he sprawls, half-sitting, at the bottom of the pit. It’s a decent-sized cavity formed by the huge boulders, big enough to stand in -- just his luck that a buildup of leaves had covered the opening. He can feel half a dozen bumps and bruises forming; mud coats one ear and entirely fills one of his shoes.The other shoe is fine, but the ankle inside the shoe is not. It’s already swelling, his soaked sock far too tight. Sprained. John hopes to God it’s not worse than that.

He shifts experimentally and gasps as a white bolt of pain shoots up his leg. More leaves choke the ground here, thick with a wet, musty smell, something sweet and wrong and familiar. Just as the smell blooms into the cavity, John turns his head to stare into the half-decomposed eye sockets of their murder victim.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes, pulse hammering behind his ears. Every conscious and unconscious instinct relays the same message: John screams his flatmate’s name so loudly that his voice shatters into a hoarse rasp.

Distressingly, this isn’t the first time John has been in a trench with a dead body, but experience is a feeble weapon against the putrid reality of the stench. His gag reflex rises to attention and prepares to eject the contents of his stomach. Fighting it down, John rolls to one side and pulls himself up along the back of the pit. He hauls himself to standing before losing his footing, accidentally throwing weight on his twisted ankle and nearly blacking out from the pain. This time, he does vomit, coughing into the disrupted leaves alongside the corpse.

His vision swims, eyes streaming tears as he scrubs at them with the muddy hand not clinging to the side of the hole. A voice, presumably his, babbles a stream of profanity. When he manages to blink the last of the tears away, he quickly takes stock: the opening of the cavity is wide, but a good six inches above his head, and the side of the pit is smooth, with only a few roots to serve as handholds. Even without a bad ankle, it would be a challenge to pull himself up. With his ankle in its current state, however, John’s odds of escape are not worth thinking about. He’ll have to wait for Sherlock. On the bright side, even in dim light and impending rain, Sherlock could probably track a single bee back to its hive. He’ll have no trouble following the evidence of John’s aborted hike.

The body on the floor of the pit regards him with empty eyes. Rachel Howells -- Sherlock has told him this much, at least. Thankfully, debris covers more than half of her near-unrecognizable form. The light outside the pit is failing quickly and it’s difficult to discern much about the state of the body, other than the fact that the unlucky Miss Howells was clothed, and is now extremely deceased. Given the smell, John isn’t sure he cares to get close enough to gather further details.

John screws his eyes shut against a fresh wave of pain. His anger at Sherlock rattles emptily in his head without purchase. John should be angrier. A rational man would be angrier, because really, trapped in a pit with a corpse and a sprained ankle is high on the list of unforgivable life events. But John has never truly been a rational man -- which, come to think of it, is probably why he’s in this pit in the first place. He calls up an image of Sherlock in his mind, imagines what he’ll say when Sherlock shows up, but the blame won’t come. This sort of thing, the corpse, the utter madness of it, somehow falls under the category of things John signed up for when he threw in his lot with Sherlock Holmes.

No, when John thinks of Sherlock, he feels only relief. Relief, and warmth, and a twist of exasperation that Sherlock was, of course, right about the sodding corpse.

He sends up a new, hoarser cry for his flatmate, and waits.

* * *

Sherlock arrives precisely ten minutes after John starts to panic in earnest. This is, by John’s watch, ten minutes after it starts to rain.

“Fucking hell,” John breathes, his voice useless from shouting, as Sherlock’s pale face appears over the edge of the cavity. Daylight has mostly disappeared, leaving only the dimmest glow at the cavity’s opening. John is still propped against the wall, mostly shielded from the rain, but when Sherlock hadn’t appeared within minutes as expected, John’s imagination began to concoct a string of disasters involving the appearance of the man who’d installed Rachel Howells at the bottom of that pit.

“John.” Sherlock’s sonorous voice is unusually strained. He peers into the pit and his eyes widen, nose wrinkling from the stench. “Are you all right?”

“Yes and no,” John says weakly. “But I’ve got company down here. It’s a regular tea party.”

To John’s surprise, Sherlock doesn’t acknowledge the corpse. “Why can’t you get out?”

“Ankle,” John says, gesturing. “Sprained, not broken, as far as I can tell. But it’s not a very good sprain, as they go.”

Sherlock lies on his stomach in the mud, spectacular coat and all, and extends a hand down into the cavity. Fat drops of rain plaster his curls to his forehead. “Take my hand.”

“Don’t you want to look at --”

“Come on, John.”

“She looks worse than I do.”

“She can wait.”

Something swells in John, a strange sort of buoyancy. He supposes he must be light-headed from prolonged exposure to horrific odours. “Hang on,” he says, and shifts himself against the wall of the cavity to face Sherlock, one foot raised gingerly. He reaches up, and Sherlock’s large hand folds firmly around his.

“No good,” John says, the rain starting to come down harder. “Both hands. The side of the hole’s too slippery.”

Sherlock nods, shifts, then throws out his other hand, straining to reach. “Careful.”

“Right,” John says, and grabs. Sherlock slides his hands down to grip John’s forearms, and by unspoken signal, they heave. John wrenches himself upward and gets a foot onto the wall, pushes off, and Sherlock drags him bodily out of the hole, pulling hard enough that John hits the wet hill with a heavy grunt. John winces as pain lances through his ankle, but it’s not as bad as it could be, and Sherlock quickly rolls him to one side.

“I’m okay,” John says, as Sherlock’s head shoots up to peer at him in the near-dark. Deft hands fly over John’s body feeling for injury, brushing over John’s arms, shoulders, the back of his head, as John struggles to sit up. “Sherlock, I’m okay.”

Temporarily satisfied that John seems to be in one piece, Sherlock slings one of John’s arms over his shoulders. “Ready?”

They don’t need to talk. Rain patters heavily onto the hillside as they stagger to standing, Sherlock supporting most of John’s weight. They move as a two-headed monster lurching through the woods, and by the time they struggle into the clearing next to the Range Rover, they’re both utterly winded and soaking wet.

“Into the car,” Sherlock orders, fumbling in his coat pockets for keys. “Take off your clothes.”

John blinks stupidly. “What?”

“You smell like a corpse.” Sherlock reaches for John’s jacket, John teetering on one foot and holding up an arm half in protest, but Sherlock won’t be deterred. The rain begins to ease up, and the surrounding trees rustle with wind.

John shivers. “Sherlock --”

But Sherlock wrenches off the jacket, which admittedly isn’t much use anymore, as it’s soaked straight through to the lining and striped with mud and other things which are probably not mud. He leaves John propped against the car and tosses the wet jacket unceremoniously underneath the rear tires, then unlocks the boot of the car, leaning in to wrestle with the seats until they’re folded down. John feels uncharacteristically helpless. “Sit up here,” Sherlock instructs, pointing to the car’s open tailgate.

John complies. “What took you so long?”

“Distracted,” Sherlock says, and it’s unclear whether he’s referring to the past or the present. His long fingers work at the laces of the shoe on John’s injured foot. “Your ankle and foot have swelled.”

John leans forward, beginning to feel ridiculous. He’s perfectly capable of handling this on his own, as Sherlock should well know. “Hey, hey. I can do this. Why don’t you --”

Sherlock looks up at him, eyes bright under dripping curls. “Let me,” he says quietly.

In the face of Sherlock’s unusual attentiveness, John can’t protest. Sherlock works the wet shoe off with caution, only evicting one involuntary wince as he peels away John’s stiff, muddy sock. Once free, John’s ankle throbs heavily, and he bites his lip to keep from swearing.

“All right?” Sherlock says hurriedly. “Your jeans. Come on.” In the near-dark, wind hastening his swift, shivering gestures, he reaches forward to tug at the sodden denim. A feeble joke about undressing on a first date dies on John’s lips.

John fumbles with the button and zip, then lifts his hips obediently as Sherlock pulls the jeans down, easing them over John’s injured ankle. The jeans join John’s shoes and jacket under the shelter of the car, and at last, most of their stench no longer clings to John. With a few quick gestures, Sherlock urges John into the car and folds himself in behind him, pulling the tailgate firmly closed.

With the rear seats of the Range Rover folded down, there’s nearly enough room for John to stretch his legs. He eases himself back on his elbows, shivering hard in his damp shirt and vest. The seats don’t fold completely flat, leaving a section of the empty rear cab at an incline, and John orients himself to prop his injured ankle up on the slope of the folded seat. Despite the rough, turf-like carpet threatening to rub his bare legs raw, it’s really not so bad in the back of the SUV. The rain-streaked windows let in just enough light to make out silhouettes in the close quarters of the cabin, and the weakened storm beats cozily on the roof. The lack of rotting corpses is an especially delightful feature.

Sherlock sheds his coat and leans forward to drape it over the driver’s seat, where it slumps like some great wounded animal. He begins unbuttoning his jacket and dress shirt. Wordlessly, he tosses his jacket over John’s bare legs, then takes off his button-down and pulls his vest over his head.

“What are you --”

Sherlock shrugs his button-down on again, not bothering to do it up, then then folds his awkwardly angled limbs to position himself near John’s feet. They’re nearly touching, and John shudders for reasons that may not have much to do with the cold. His body must be reacting to the proximity, some sort of automatic response. Before John can devote much attention to his own quickened pulse, Sherlock shocks him by twisting his discarded cotton vest around John’s injured ankle and starting to wrap it firmly. It’s warm and soft with Sherlock’s body heat.

“That’s -- yeah,” John says, bracing himself as Sherlock pulls it tight. “How did you --”

“Sprains need to be wrapped with a flexible bandage, so a stretchable cotton should serve. You need to elevate your leg to reduce the swelling, but clearly, you know that well enough.” Sherlock’s fingers smooth the lumpy, knotted fabric, ghosting over John’s bare leg and raising gooseflesh on his forearms.

“Christ, I don’t even know why you need me,” John says wryly. “You’ve been letting me do the medical work all this time, I could have had a holiday.”

This, at last, gets a snort of amusement from Sherlock, which brushes away a lingering shadow of John’s tension. It occurs to John that he still ought to be furious, but he’s fallen into his customary role of reassuring Sherlock that any mishap is a minor inconvenience.

Satisfied with the makeshift bandage, Sherlock twists to orient himself next to John. It doesn’t make much sense for Sherlock to elevate his own feet, but all the same he lies back, props his feet on the incline, and glances over at John. “You can’t be comfortable,” he says, in a quiet rumble that does nothing to ease John’s shivers.

“I don’t know,” John says. “Compared to the last half hour, this is quite luxurious.” When Sherlock doesn’t laugh, he adds, “You can’t exactly be comfortable back here either.”

“I’m fine,” Sherlock says dismissively, waving a hand and staring up at the ceiling of the cramped cabin.

John clears his throat. “Look, Sherlock, what I said before --”

“Don’t apologise.”

John’s apology withers into a bemused exhale of exasperation. Rain patters in lazy, haphazard drops on the roof. The car, having been free of petrol and passengers for some time, is not particularly warm, and John’s shivers fill much of the silence. He rubs his arms with icy hands, but it’s like trying to put out a fire with gasoline, and he only succeeds in raising a violent wave of gooseflesh. His legs are utterly bare, even with Sherlock’s jacket serving as a makeshift blanket, and his wrapped ankle makes it difficult to curl up and conserve body heat.

Instead, his ankle throbs, a steady pulse in synchronicity with his chattering teeth. He supposes he should try to sleep, but he’s far too high on adrenaline to even think about it. And oddly, there’s something about Sherlock’s proximity that sends a small thrill through John’s nerves. Though their daily lives are deeply intertwined, they don’t often touch at all, much less lie shoulder to shoulder. Sherlock smells of dirt and rain and something home-like. His narrow chest rises steadily next to John’s, his shirt falling open to reveal a strip of pale skin in the dim light.

“Your coat isn’t waterproof,” Sherlock says, interrupting the chatter of John’s teeth.

“I guess not.”

“You’ve got to warm up.” The direct order holds a rare edge of anxiety.

“Fascinating that you think I can produce heat on command.”

John doesn’t need light to see Sherlock’s eyeroll, which he manages to convey with a shift of his shoulders. After another moment, during which John’s teeth still rattle of their own accord, Sherlock breathes a shaky huff of impatience and shifts again.“Fine,” he mutters. “Fine.”

“What --”

John’s thought is cut off as Sherlock abruptly rolls toward him, crashing into John’s personal space with the grace of a wrecking ball. Pointy elbows jab at John’s chest as Sherlock envelops him, octopus-like. Or perhaps this is what an octopus would feel like if the octopus had just swallowed a baby giraffe.

John is too stunned even to shiver. Sherlock seems to have no idea what to do with any of his limbs, but he gathers John against his solid chest nonetheless, smoothing surprisingly warm hands over John’s arms. John can no longer move; he can only blink helplessly at the ceiling as Sherlock’s heavy thigh pins his hips to the rough carpet. He lets Sherlock’s hands rub warmth into him, feeling as if he is watching all of this from afar.

“You’re freezing,” Sherlock says finally, and it sounds disapproving, but his smooth baritone cracks. His breath huffs against John’s ear, warm enough that it raises the hair on John’s forearms.

John swallows. His nerves are sending so many messages that he can no longer sort them out in the cacophony. And even though he needs body heat like a starving man needs food, other forces threaten to shake him to the core. Sherlock, coiled around him like a python, feels wonderful, a sensation that stares John boldly in the face and dares him to question it.

John gropes for an appropriate response to Sherlock’s embrace and finds none. Pain and cold have torn away most of his defences and a good deal of his logic. Simple fact: Sherlock is warm, and John’s entire body adores every inch of this unprecedented contact. Sherlock’s heavy chest presses the knobbly bits of John’s spine into the hard floor, while one long leg hooks over John’s bare thigh at an angle that seems mathematically impossible. Sherlock’s torso is mostly ribs -- in fact, it feels as if a large percentage of Sherlock is ribs -- but the rest is clearly muscle, dense enough to be a comforting weight. Sherlock lies mostly still, half-sprawled on top of him, his palms occasionally smoothing heat into John’s exposed biceps. John’s shaking begins to subside, and he takes a large, unsteady breath and relaxes utterly into Sherlock’s wiry hold.

Surprisingly, as John surrenders to the ungainly circle of Sherlock’s arms, Sherlock’s hold loses much of its tension. John’s breath, steadier now, falls into rhythm with Sherlock’s. The muffled sounds of weather and forest rustle around the car.

Gradually, Sherlock’s movements slow, then still. His silence stretches long enough that John wonders if he’s fallen asleep. With some difficulty, he twists to the side to peek at Sherlock, whose head nearly rests on John’s shoulder. But Sherlock isn’t asleep at all. He’s watching John with an odd, intent expression, as if memorising every one of the six inches between their noses.

“Um,” John says huskily, “thanks.”

John’s brain begins to click into gear. There are other things he should say: he’s much warmer, for one, and he should offer to relieve Sherlock of this bizarre hugging obligation as soon as possible. And there’s the murder victim, and the matter of their water supply, and how they’ll hike out with John’s injury. But all of these thoughts are lodged under a blissful sort of inertia. John doesn’t want to move, because Sherlock will almost certainly unwind from around him, and this surreal place will dissipate into the rain.

Sherlock quirks a half-smile, leans in, and kisses him.

Astoundingly, John’s body was waiting for this, although the rest of John is gobsmacked. The comfort of Sherlock’s proximity has triggered some kind of automatic response, and rather than pulling away, John goes still. Sherlock sighs and his lips part, their heads at an impossible angle, and his tongue slides against John’s. His hands grip John’s shoulders, their teeth clicking awkwardly, and it’s at this moment that Sherlock finally seems to realise that he is kissing someone. He gasps and pulls back, staring at John with wide, panicked eyes.

John’s heart hammers, his body hit with an abrupt wave of cold as Sherlock struggles backward and sits up. It feels as if he must be hallucinating, except his lower lip stings and his mouth tastes of smoke and Sherlock’s honey throat lozenges. Sherlock looks absolutely shocked. John has never seen Sherlock look this shocked about anything. He looks ready to bolt out of the car.

John’s brain spews a cascade of useless ticker tape about how very wrong this was. Then it spews a bit more about the certain demise of their friendship, and how this could have been avoided if John hadn’t submitted to Sherlock’s misguided cuddling. Somewhere in the cacophony is a stream of nonsense about why the hell Sherlock might have done such a thing.

They stare at each other, Sherlock’s eyes round and pale in the dim light. This can be remedied, John thinks. It was just a mistake, a momentary glitch, something to laugh about over a pint. God knows he needs a pint right now.

John fumbles to sitting, his ankle twinging, and casts about for a joke. Two warm-blooded men, the back of a car -- there must be something.

Sherlock shifts his gaze to the floor.

Something very surprising roars to the forefront of John’s thoughts: a wash of pleasure, the blissful memory of Sherlock’s mouth against his -- because it was bliss, wasn’t it? That feeling, when categorised, seems far closer to bliss than anything else.

It suddenly seems very wrong to crack a joke, to dismiss this as an accident, to cover this up as if it were a crime. Rachel Howells, swept under a pile of leaves.

Sherlock reaches toward the latch to open the boot. No, this -- _this_ is wrong. The kiss was not.

John leans forward, drags Sherlock’s head clumsily towards his own, and kisses him soundly in return.

For a moment Sherlock freezes, hand still outstretched toward the latch. John’s brain roars to life again, clamoring about horrific mistakes. And then Sherlock lets out a helpless moan, and all the clamoring fades happily to black.

Sherlock’s hands fly over John’s back, groping for purchase as if they’re in freefall, and they sink back to the floor. John takes a graceless elbow to the side and breaks off to gasp for breath. He leans in again just as Sherlock does and their noses collide. Stars wheel behind John’s watering eyes. Sherlock whimpers into John’s mouth, all teeth and panic and the metallic taste of someone’s split lip.

The whimper snaps into John’s lungs like a whip. This is Sherlock. Sherlock, making that noise into his mouth. _Jesus._ This is everything he’s never allowed himself to think about. He still doesn’t allow himself to think about it, which is proving difficult to uphold at the moment.

Rather than think, John slides his hand to fit against Sherlock’s writhing waist where Sherlock’s shirt has fallen open. Muscles jump under John’s fingers, and Sherlock breaks the kiss to tip his head back and gasp. It’s almost as if he’s never been touched --

It’s almost as if he’s never been touched, John thinks.

John can feel Sherlock’s heart pounding against his own chest, feel him shaking. John’s rationality gives a desperate shout, at last breaking through the din of sensory overload: this is all too fast, they’ve got to talk, this is a massive disaster, and even if it isn’t, it’s more than John can process --

“Sherlock,” John breathes, feeling sweat prickle at his hairline. “Sherlock, wait, we need to --”

Sherlock jerks away as if stung, rolls to the side and curls in on himself. John can see nothing past the wall of Sherlock’s shoulders, which heave as if he’s been sprinting across the hills.

Oh, God. “It’s okay,” John says quickly, his voice a raspy mess. “It’s all fine, I just wanted --”

“Oh, God,” Sherlock groans, echoing John’s precise thoughts. “Oh, God, I don’t know what happened --”

“Sherlock.” John reaches out, puts a tentative hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock twitches, but doesn’t move. “Really, it’s okay.”

Sherlock rolls to lie flat on his back as John quickly pulls his hand away. “It’s not,” he growls. “It’s not okay.”

John’s stomach plummets into his injured ankle and sends up a wave of nausea. No way to pretend this never happened, but that’s not what he’ll tell Sherlock. “Just forget it. It was stress, all right? My damn ankle. Just forget it.”

The words die in the stuffy cabin as soon as John utters them. The likelihood of Sherlock forgetting anything, much less something of this magnitude, is about the same as the ground opening up to swallow the Range Rover at this very moment. Which might be a welcome turn of events.

“You don’t understand.” Sherlock drags the heels of his hands over closed eyes. “I am always in control, John. I have precise command of my faculties.”

They breathe into the dark, intensity radiating from Sherlock in near-tangible waves. Of course, Sherlock will do the precise opposite of forgetting. This incident will have to be peeled apart, analysed until it’s reduced to the firing of synapses triggered by pure chance.

But there’s something very wrong about dissecting this, however it happened.

“Did you... like it?” John says quietly, closing his eyes and realising he may not want to hear the answer.

Slow, ragged breathing, and then, Sherlock’s voice, in its deepest register: “Yes.”

John’s heart thuds erratically. “Okay.”

More silence.

“Would you --” John says, and braces himself, because any answer to this question is terrifying. “Would you like to do it again?”

Sherlock’s response is horrifically slow. The seconds drag by in a mire of heartbeats and stillness. “Yes.”

John opens his eyes to look at Sherlock, lying next to him in profile. Darkness throws his features into shadow.

“I don’t know what to do,” Sherlock whispers.

Sherlock’s anxiety hammers at John as if it were his own. His chest tightens.“We, um. We don’t have to do anything. Just -- just go to sleep. Figure it out tomorrow.”

Sherlock chuckles darkly. “How idealistic.”

“What do you mean?”

“You. Assuming either of those two things are possible.”

“What two things?”

“Sleep. A solution.”

“Sherlock.” John clears his throat. “This doesn’t need a solution, all right? It just... happened. These things happen.”

Sherlock scoffs. “Not to me.”

John lets out a long breath. The windows of the car are beginning to fog, a reminder of the heat they’ve just generated. The fear blossoming in his chest swells and refuses to be ignored. “You, er -- but you’ve done this,” John says, gesturing, and belatedly realising that no gesture is truly appropriate in this scenario. “With -- with other people. Before.” He rubs his forehead uselessly. “For fuck’s sake, Sherlock, I’m shit at talking about this.”

“If you mean, have I engaged in acts similar to the one we’ve just performed, the answer is no.”

John’s heart flips over and falls through his stomach. “You’re telling me...” he begins, but words abandon him.

“That was my first kiss of any significance, yes.”

The statement hangs suspended in the fogged cabin of the car.

“Jesus Christ,” John whispers, before he can help it.

Sherlock doesn’t speak. His posture shifts, fingertips coming to rest together under his lips in a familiar pose that indicates John should say nothing for the next several hours.

“Look,” John says. “God knows I don’t want to talk about this, but... Christ, Sherlock. Say something.”

Sherlock directs the force of his words at the ceiling. “You always want me to tell you what my brain is doing at any given second. Do you know what an impossibility that is?”

John opens his mouth to answer, but Sherlock plunges onward, rapid-fire, staring fixedly upward. “The rate of rainfall on the roof indicates that this rainstorm should be moving on within the next twenty minutes. There were no signs of recent visitors in the area where you found Rachel Howells, indicating that the murderer disposed of her corpse some time ago, within two days after her death. The body is in an advanced state of decomposition but some of her clothing is still intact, meaning we can run soil and fibre analysis when we return to Barts. The path to the hole where her body was hidden requires physical agility and stamina to traverse, and concealing both the body and the hole would call for some strength. This makes the brother-in-law an unlikely suspect, considering his severe asthma. Asthma? Yes, he had the rather tell-tale shape of an inhaler in his pocket when he took off his jacket at the restaurant, not to mention a faint wheeze in his speech pattern that intensified when he was agitated.

“Your ankle will continue to swell for the next few hours, since we have no ice. Your shivering indicated the onset of hypothermia, but given our shared body heat and continued proximity, the danger has passed. I completely underestimated the sheer physical pleasure of touching you. The sensation of your tongue inside my mouth was absolutely astonishing and I cannot stop thinking about replicating that feeling again.”

John blinks, heart hammering with the thrill of shock. It feels as if someone has lit a bomb and placed it in the car between them. Sherlock turns his head to look at John, his mouth set in a wavering line of fear.

John hopes to God they can deal with the aftermath of the detonation.

They reach for each other. Sherlock dives into the kiss with such intensity that John fears for the safety of his dental work. They grapple at each other urgently until they are tangled, pressed shoulder to hip, the pain in John’s ankle forgotten in favor of the white-hot rug burn he’ll certainly have on his upper thigh tomorrow.

Sherlock delves deeper into John’s mouth and slides against him. Their hips align, and suddenly Sherlock’s hard, startling erection slots against John’s own. A moan drags its way from John’s mouth just as Sherlock tenses and pulls back, holding himself up to look down at John, wide-eyed.

“John.”

John swallows hard enough that he fears for his tongue. Their hips are still pressed together, and he may be about to black out from arousal. “Y-yeah?”

“John. You want to have sex.”

John’s eyebrows shoot up. “What -- we don’t have to --”

“But you want to,” Sherlock repeats.

“Yes.” John’s voice cracks in two. “Brilliant deduction.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, and lowers himself to capture John’s mouth again.

John’s eyes fly open. He struggles to extract himself from the kiss, rolling them sideways and wincing as his ankle briefly takes weight. “Sherlock,” he gasps, as soon as his mouth is free.

Even in the semi-dark, John can see the hard line of Sherlock’s impatient eyebrow. “Careful. Lie back --”

“Sod my ankle. Will you just hang on --”

Sherlock Holmes is capable of many things, but hanging on is not one of them. A tentative hand steals over to John’s hipbone, slipping towards the heat of his erection. Sherlock swallows, then runs a thumb over the length of John’s cock experimentally, as if testing his weight on cracked ice. John winces. “Jesus --”

 _“I_ want to have sex,” Sherlock announces.

John’s breathing hits a snag as Sherlock draws another line down his cock through the sweat-damp cotton of his pants. Reality strikes him with blunt force. Sherlock wants to lose his virginity, and John wants to take it. He rolls this sentence over in his mind: each time, it generates the flip in his stomach associated with carnival rides. Fucking hell. He would put a stop to this insanity immediately if his entire body wasn’t quivering with the sheer ecstasy of Sherlock’s touch.

But given that Sherlock’s usual responses to emotional overload include tantrums, sulking, and unreasonably long silences, John’s not particularly eager to find out what Sherlock will do in the aftermath of losing his virginity in the back of a Range Rover. Hell, he’s not especially keen to find out what Sherlock will do in the aftermath of losing his virginity to _John._

“You want to,” Sherlock continues, his voice darker than the air between them. “I want to. The solution is obvious.”

John’s voice shakes with restraint. “Hell, Sherlock, it’s not like ordering a curry.”

Sherlock withdraws his hand only to slip it underneath John’s shirt and vest, hot against John’s oversensitive skin. He runs one finger along the elastic of John’s pants with surgical precision.

“Oh, _Christ.”_

Both of them shudder, John’s protests dying in favor of the arousal rising in his gut. Sherlock’s hand strays lower, threatening to slip inside the waistband, and John’s voice returns for a ragged moan before he gains enough control to speak.

“No, wait. Sherlock --”

Sherlock pulls back and looks down at their now-entangled legs, chest heaving. “Your ankle?”

“No,” John pants, following Sherlock’s eyes and boggling at the two of them twined together, “no, it’s --”

“Is this --” Sherlock extracts his hand from between them, a furrowed line between his brows. “Is this not good?”

“No, God no, that’s not it,” John can feel Sherlock tensing, muscles coiling into knots, and his breath catches. “It’s just -- _timing,_ Sherlock. Are you sure you want -- this? Here?”

“John.” It’s the lowest of all possible rumbles. Sherlock’s hands rove desperately over John’s ribcage. “Have I been coerced against my will?”

“No.” John allows himself a half-smile. “No, but -- this. Me, in a -- in the back of a car.”

“I have it on reliable authority that a statistically significant percentage of virginity loss occurs in the back of a vehicle.”

A laugh startles out of John before he can contain it. “Right,” he says. “Right. So we’re just going to --” He licks his lips as Sherlock resumes his exploration of the elastic border of John’s pants. “You, and me, and you’ve never, and we’re just going to -- I mean, you and me. You want -- me. To do this. With you.”

In lieu of a response, Sherlock slips his hand inside the elastic of John’s waistband and wraps it gently around John’s insistent erection. “Jesus,” John stutters. It seems to be the only word he can remember, so he says it again, his forehead falling against Sherlock’s shoulder. “Why haven’t you had sex before?” he manages, as a thousand nerve endings shout at him to shut up and let Sherlock keep trying this miraculous new activity.

“Can’t abide relationships.” Sherlock’s hand shifts, and John swallows a groan. “Do you always talk this much? I was led to believe there was less talking.”

Can’t abide relationships. The words whirl bitterly in John’s mind. “You can’t abide relationships,” he echoes, pulling back slightly. “What is this, exactly, then?”

“I don’t see why we need to discuss semantics.”

“Says the _virgin holding my dick in his hand.”_

Sherlock gives John’s cock one long, emphatic stroke as John bites down on an involuntary gasp. “You like this. I want to do this. Problem?”

No, John’s brain practically screams. No, no problem, you bloody gorgeous man, just keep your hand right there --

“Yes,” he says instead, and if his own cock could somehow throttle him, it would do so.

Sherlock groans in frustration, but doesn’t let go. “You’re my best friend,” John continues shakily. “We just _kissed_ less than fifteen minutes ago, and now you’re ready to sleep with me, and you’ve never slept with _anyone_. And apparently this is not even a relationship, so I don’t know what the hell it is. You don’t want to take a minute and figure this out?”

“You assume I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Sherlock, I’m definitely not a virgin, and I don’t know what _I’m_ doing right now, and -- can we not have this conversation with your hand there?”

Sherlock huffs impatiently and runs his thumb up the length of John’s shaft, circling the tip. “Why not?”

“Oh God, yes,” John breathes, hoping it’s not possible to die as a casualty of one’s own internal war. “Wait -- no.” He grips Sherlock’s wrist, stilling Sherlock’s motions. “No, I -- _fucking hell --”_

“Your signals are quite expertly mixed,” Sherlock deadpans, low and quiet.

John shuts him up with a kiss. It’s a testament to how quickly they adapt to one another: this one is smooth and deep, without teeth or bumped noses or bitten lips, their limbs slotted into a practised, tight embrace. Sherlock’s satisfied sigh is both gratifying and terrifying. They are doing this.

Except.

“Wait.” John pulls away, trapping Sherlock’s wrist again. “Wait. Condoms.”

“I’m a virgin,” Sherlock says dryly, trying to wrest his hand back to its previous position. “As you’ve reminded me.”

“You’re an ex-addict.”

“I’ve been tested.”

“Sherlock.” John’s resolve is slipping faster than a rain-slick shoe on wet leaves. “We don’t want to get... _anything_ on the rental car.”

“Not a rental car,” Sherlock says to the crook of John’s neck, planting a distracting, feather-light kiss.

“Not a rental --”

“Mycroft’s.” John can feel Sherlock’s wicked smile against his skin.

John dissolves into horrified chuckles. “Oh, Christ. Of course it is. Of course. Right, in that case, let’s contaminate every available surface.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Sherlock rumbles, and skates his free hand along John’s side, prompting a new wave of gooseflesh over John’s legs.

John gives a huge shudder, and with it, something within him gives way. He’s more turned on than he’s ever been in his life, and he may suffer some sort of aneurysm if he has to keep protesting in the face of Sherlock’s persistence. He’s been practical, voiced warnings, tried to avert disaster. The only rational explanation for Sherlock’s hand roaming eagerly up his ribcage is that Sherlock must be experiencing a bout of temporary insanity, because there’s no real way Sherlock -- _Sherlock_ \-- could be overcome with lust for John.

Which is why John should give in and do this, because this may be his one and only chance.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. If this is really happening, we’re going slowly. You tell me if you need to stop.”

“I never do anything I don’t want to do.”

A wry chuckle. “God knows I’m aware of that.”

“No more talking,” Sherlock orders, and then hooks his thumbs on the waistband of John’s pants and eases them over John’s painfully hard erection.

Giant flags flutter proudly above the rubble of John’s internal war. The side begging to ravish Sherlock has emerged victorious, leaving nothing but Sherlock’s bright eyes and the nimble hand that has once again closed around John.

John’s own fingers fumble at Sherlock’s trousers, somehow freeing the clasp. Sherlock’s thumb captures the precome leaking from John’s cock and spreads it over the tip. John can’t help it: all barriers gone, he swears loudly, shouts ripping from deep in his chest.

The cabin of the car narrows into darkness and breath. At last John allows himself to let Sherlock’s hands roam, to succumb to the wild improbability of Sherlock writhing around him. He imagines tenderness in these kisses, in Sherlock’s fumbling strokes. John can’t remember anything like this, a time when lips and hands were so charged with meaning. He’s had hands around his cock before, but none guided by someone who knew John’s mind as if it were a map of the Underground.

John’s cock throbs, now slick with precome and Sherlock’s ministrations. Remaining clothes have long since been tossed into cold corners. Rough carpet burns John’s skin. Orgasm builds deep in his groin: not yet. Through a haze of arousal, he reaches for Sherlock’s cock, curved and hard. Muffled shouts hammer against the fogged windows. John recognizes one voice as his own, shockingly loud, a stream of God and Sherlock with Jesus on alternate breaths.

And then: cold.

A commanding hand forces them apart. Sherlock rolls onto his back, bare chest heaving.

“Oh, _God,”_ he groans, anguished enough to chill John’s blood. “I _can’t.”_

Sherlock’s voice feels as if it’s vibrating within John’s chest. So close. They had been so close.

“Bloody hell,” John gasps, only faintly aware of the rest of his body, all rug burns and bitten lips, one ankle hot with pain. “What’s wrong?”

Sherlock’s labored breath is the only answer. John’s heart pounds against his ribs as if locked out and desperate for re-entry.

Here, at last, is the worst of what John had feared. Sherlock has come to his senses. He knows now that John’s feelings bleed from friendship into lust, into something far more, have possibly always done so. And Sherlock cannot, or does not, feel the same. John wants nothing more than to go back in time, to skirt the edge of affection and never look it squarely in the face.

“Sherlock?”

Panic crawls across John’s skin. “Sherlock, so help me,” he says, far more desperately than he’d intended. “If you leave --” His voice shatters into unsteady silence.

Sherlock says nothing else. John’s arousal recedes with the thump of his heart.

That’s not it. He has missed something, something that must have been evident in the overload of their embrace. _You do not observe,_ his inner Sherlock lectures, while the real Sherlock remains silent. But damn it, John had let himself go, allowed himself to unravel under Sherlock’s hands --

“Was I -- was it too much?” John says hesitantly. “I mean -- I was loud.”

A careful breath. “It wasn’t you.”

“Okay.”

Sherlock blows out a breath and closes his eyes. His hands flex, opening and closing at his sides. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

A sickening sort of sadness chases a shiver up John’s spine. “Right,” he says quietly. “Right. Okay.”

Sherlock opens his eyes, scanning the blurred shadows outside the car. “No. I -- I couldn’t _think_. I almost...”

He trails off with such uncharacteristic uncertainty that John can only blink at him in the dark. “Is that what you wanted to hear?” Sherlock continues bitterly. “You were right, John. You were right, we shouldn’t do this. I can’t.”

John exhales. “If that’s what you think I was saying,” he says quietly, “you’re wrong.”

“Oh, that’s right, you wanted to _talk,”_ Sherlock snaps. “Well, we’re talking now. Happy?”

Anger prickles in John’s stomach. He is spent, winded, entirely wound up and sore from lack of release, every nerve overworked. He rubs at his eyes; looking at Sherlock is too much. “No,” he says quietly. “I’m really, really not.”

Moments pass while wind rustles outside the car. Sherlock shifts next to him. A hand, on his shoulder: light, like a fallen leaf.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says.

If the words are meant as a blanket apology, they fail at covering much of anything. John swallows, turns his head, and opens his eyes. Sherlock looks back at him, his expression shielded.

“I’m sorry too,” John says, surprised at hearing his own thoughts. “I can’t kiss you and go back, Sherlock, I can’t just shut that off. You might be able to do it, but I can’t.”

Sherlock absorbs this, focused on some distant point in the dark.

“I thought about kissing you, before,” he says. “But... it was nothing like I predicted.”

Sherlock thought about kissing him. The idea hits John like a fist. Their days in Baker Street spin backwards: the times John leaned in to read over Sherlock’s shoulder, passed the sugar, shoved Sherlock’s feet off the sofa to claim space. Was every moment charged, and John unaware? How deeply had he buried his own desires?

“I’m an idiot,” John says.

“I’m not sure that’s relevant, but I won’t dispute it.”

John exhales, a single, weak laugh. “I just. I wish I’d known.”

Sherlock’s hand, still resting on his shoulder, tightens, then releases. “Would you have done something?”

“I -- I don’t know,” John admits. “Yes. I think so.”

“I never imagined.” Sherlock’s expression clouds. “I thought I’d mapped out everything.”

“You’d... mapped this out?”

“What your skin would feel like,” Sherlock says bluntly. “Your responses, the taste of your mouth. Each part of your body in the palm of my hand. I had all the evidence before me, John, it was easy to see it.”

Shivers crawl over John’s bare legs, heat pooling helplessly in his groin. He can’t speak.

“But I’d never,” Sherlock continues, and pauses. “I’d never thought what it would feel like to have you touch _me.”_

John’s odd sixth sense for knowing Sherlock’s mind begins to awaken. He can see it now: Sherlock, forgetting his own body as he does on a daily basis. Transport, after all. Maybe he was overwhelmed by the massive signal-to-noise ratio.

John certainly was.

“You may be brilliant at mapping things out,” John says, turning on his side to close the space between them, “but you forget important variables from time to time.”

Sherlock huffs in annoyance, but doesn’t move away; instead, he edges close enough that John can feel the warmth of his breath. “The petrol was an oversight, I’ve already said --”

“Idiot,” John says, and slides a bit closer. “I meant _you_. You forgot about _yourself.”_ He clears his throat. “And there’s the only time I’ll ever be saying that sentence.”

Sherlock hums, faintly bemused, the tension easing from the set of his shoulders. “I don’t listen to you nearly enough.”

John blinks at him, a smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

“And there’s the only time I’ll ever be saying _that_ sentence,” Sherlock adds.

John chuckles. Sherlock’s deeper chuckle joins his, rumbling beneath the higher timbre of John’s laugh as it always does. The rightness of it stings at the corners of John’s eyes.

Sherlock reaches out and wraps a hand around the back of John’s neck, bringing their foreheads together.

Their laughter subsides, drifting into relief, and they stay that way for a very long time. As if Sherlock can simply let his thoughts flow into John’s head, as if thin walls of bone are the only thing keeping their minds apart.

The rain, which has mostly relented, shakes a flurry of drops onto the roof.

“You okay?” John ventures.

Sherlock hums in acknowledgement. It’s a content sort of hum, calm enough that John dares to break away and brush a kiss over one sharp cheekbone.

“Bit of a strange night, I’d say,” John says quietly.

Sherlock chuckles. “You could say that.”

John has a sudden urge to gather Sherlock even closer, and he does just that. Sherlock doesn’t resist; on the contrary, he settles into John’s embrace with a noise that sounds close to pleasure. Their feet intertwine, Sherlock’s long toes cold against John’s one bare ankle.

Sleep tugs at John’s eyelids. “So, what, um. What do we do now?”

Sherlock shifts against him.“When it’s light, sterilise the water I found while you were busy falling into holes. Try to fashion a crutch from a fallen branch, I can’t carry you everywhere.”

John chuckles and shoves him a bit. “Not what I meant.”

He feels Sherlock smile.

“What I meant was,” John says, mostly to Sherlock’s curls, “would you -- maybe, sometime, want to... try this again?” He clears his throat. “And -- and if you don’t, that’s okay, I mean, it’s really fine. But if you did, I mean -- well.”

The rhythm of Sherlock’s breathing breaks, and he hesitates. “Yes,” he says, into John’s shoulder. “That would be -- that would be good.”

Warmth ebbs through John, a warmth that has nothing to do with Sherlock’s solid form curled around him. “It’s much better in a bed. I promise.”

“Mmm,” Sherlock acknowledges, and his grip tightens. John tilts his head to rest against Sherlock’s, nestled into the crook of his neck, and decides that rather than question this astonishing turn of events, he’ll just go along for the ride. It is, after all, what he’s best at. There are worries at the corners of his mind, but he shuts them out in favor of the simple truth. He whispers this truth into Sherlock’s curls, letting the wind drown his voice.

“John,” Sherlock says through a haze of sleep.

“Mmm.”

“Next time, you drive.”

* * *

John Watson is thoroughly enjoying the bullet points on today’s mental list. On the very top: _Do not kill Sherlock when he realises he can climb a tree to get a mobile phone signal, even if you’ve been stranded for twelve hours first._

It’s easy enough not to kill Sherlock, mostly because of the list’s second item: _Waking up tangled in Sherlock Holmes is the closest thing to bliss imaginable._

And the third: _Watching Sherlock climb a tree provides an excellent view of certain body parts._

“Two bars!” Sherlock cries, from far above John’s head. Branches creak ominously.

“Careful!” John hollers back, leaning on his improvised crutch, which is damp and smells of sap. “If you fall and sprain your ankle, we’re never getting out of this bloody place.”

“You think I’ve never climbed a tree?”

“Your inexperience in certain areas can be surprising.”

Sherlock makes a noise that sounds like good-natured profanity, but rustling obscures it. His voice drifts down once more. “I’m a fast learner, John.”

John shades his eyes, squints up into the tree, and grins.

**Author's Note:**

> songs for Drive, if you'd like to set the mood:  
> "[Moonlight Mile](http://youtu.be/0Gy3PH4Sf6g)," The Rolling Stones  
> "[Roll Away Your Stone](http://youtu.be/2O-BwV0DDUY)," Mumford & Sons  
> "[I Will Follow You Into The Dark](http://youtu.be/LfNVfiqKBeM)," Death Cab for Cutie  
> "[I Am Not Waiting Anymore](http://youtu.be/GBHON_a25Ao)," Field Report  
> "[Montezuma](http://youtu.be/cdN2bfov9JQ)," Fleet Foxes

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] Drive](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8648887) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)




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